Luna Blackwood
Science & Oddities ReporterGrew up reading medical encyclopedias for fun. Now she writes about the beautiful, disgusting, terrifying machinery of the natural world.
Articles by Luna Blackwood
Plants Don't Need to Touch to Share: Fungi Bridge the Gaps
Fungal networks can grow across empty air to connect isolated plants, enabling nutrient and water transfer without any root contact. This rewrites what we thought we knew about plant communication.
The Smoking Paradox: Why Cigarettes Seem to Protect Against Ulcerative Colitis
Smokers develop ulcerative colitis at dramatically lower rates than nonsmokers, and active smokers experience milder disease. Scientists have no idea why—and everyone agrees you still shouldn't smoke.
We Finally Mapped Every Neuron in a Fly's Brain—and It Broke Our Model of How Bodies Work
A complete connectome of the fruit fly brain reveals the nervous system is far more integrated with the body than neuroscience assumed. The boundary between brain and body is blurrier than we thought.
Rocks on the Ocean Floor Are Making Oxygen in Complete Darkness
Deep-sea polymetallic nodules are generating oxygen through seawater electrolysis, challenging everything we thought we knew about how oxygen enters the world.
Your Appendix Probably Has a Purpose: It's a Bacterial Backup Drive
For a century, doctors dismissed the appendix as useless evolutionary junk. New research suggests it's actually a sophisticated bacterial safe-deposit box your gut relies on.
Your Brain Deliberately Wrinkles Your Fingers in Water
Those pruney fingertips aren't waterlogged—your autonomic nervous system is actively shrinking them on purpose. Your brain does this to improve grip.
Plants Are Sabotaging Themselves—One Organelle at a Time
Inside every plant cell, mitochondria actively compete with chloroplasts for oxygen, undermining the plant's own photosynthesis. It's cellular civil war.
Your Face Is a Literal Graveyard for Microscopic Mites That Can't Poop
Demodex mites live in your facial pores by the millions, but they lack anuses entirely—meaning their waste accumulates inside their bodies until death.
Your Stomach Acid Dissolves Razor Blades (And You'd Probably Be Fine)
Human stomach acid is so corrosive it can dissolve a razor blade in two hours—before it has time to cause serious injury. Your digestive system is basically a mild industrial acid vat.
Your Brain Is Lying About Time Every Time You Check the Clock
When you glance at a clock's second hand, your brain retroactively invents a false memory of it pausing. This isn't a glitch—it's a feature.